With Malice Aforethought

What's Mine is Yours... for a Price

Negotiations

Following breakfast the next day, the party headed to negotiate with Amecil. They elected Arglebrath to act as their chief negotiator and entered Amecil’s office to begin.

During the opening exchanges, Amecil came to the correct conclusion that the party had no negotiating experience and gave them the chance to withdraw from the process – however, she did point out that she was looking to conclude a deal sooner rather than later. Not wanting to lose their opportunity of ensuring a deal for Sir Clarvar, they opted to continue the negotiations themselves.

After beginning as instructed with bids for ore, the party quickly came to the conclusion that they wouldn’t match Amecil’s price, so they changed tack and began bidding for the purchase of the mine at 8,000 gold coins as instructed in Sir Clarvar’s letter.
Although the party increased their initial offer, Amecil was holding out for 14,000 gold coins and so the party suggested a break and returned to Peakstone to attempt to gather further information about the quarry and Amecil herself and to work out their final offer.

On returning to the negotiations, Arglebrath pitched their final offer of 12,000 gold coins. Seeing that the party seemed determined, Amecil countered by agreeing to the price, but requiring an additional 4,000 gold coins for each additional 10 feet of seam beyond 30 that is discovered. This seemed reasonable to the party, but they suggested a cap of 20,000 gold coins in total, to which Amecil agreed. The party also decided not to include a clause to specify a minimum silver content.

Returning Heroes?

The negotiations concluded, the party began the trip back to Shattered Peak. All was proceeding uneventfully until late in the day, they encountered two large bears, which had apparently attacked a small family caravan, one of which was pursuing a woman and some children toward the party.

S’heldon bravely intercepted it before it could catch its fleeing targets, suffering blows from the animal’s mighty arms. Soon, the rest of the party surrounded the bear and much to their surprise, dispatched it and a second bear with minimal further damage to themselves, with Balfor in particularly ruthless form.